An example of an article transport facility, such as one described above is described in JP Publication of Application No. 2012-044033 (Patent Document 1). In the article transport facility of Patent Document 1, a container storage for storing an article is provided to a side of a travel path along which an article transport vehicle travels. And an inactive gas supplying device for ejecting inactive gas from an eject portion is provided to the container storage. As such, by providing the container storage with the inactive gas supplying device, the article transport facility of Patent Document 1 is configured to supply inactive gas into the container making use of the time the container is stored in the container storage.
To describe in more detail, the article transport vehicle includes a vertical movement actuator for vertically moving a support portion for supporting a container. And the container storage includes a horizontal movement actuator by which the eject portion is moved horizontally. And after the article transport vehicle is stopped at a travel stop position defined in advance for the container storage, the eject portion is projected horizontally by the horizontal movement actuator so as to position the eject portion directly below the container supported by the support portion of the article transport vehicle. Subsequently, the support portion is lowered by the vertical movement actuator to connect the container to the eject portion.
As such, by horizontally moving the eject portion with the horizontal movement actuator and vertically moving the support portion with the vertical movement actuator, the positional relationship between the support portion and the eject portion can be changed between a connecting positional relationship in which the eject portion is connected to the container supported by the support portion and a separating positional relationship in which the eject portion is separated from the container supported by the support portion.
Incidentally, in the article transport facility of Patent Document 1, the nitrogen gas supply passage for supplying inactive gas to the eject portion becomes disconnected at its intermediate location when the eject portion is horizontally moved by the horizontal movement actuator. As such, the inactive gas supplying device is configured such that it cannot eject the inactive gas through the eject portion when the eject portion is projected horizontally by the horizontal movement actuator.
Therefore, in the article transport facility of Patent Document 1, in order to eject inactive gas from the eject portion to supply the inactive gas to the container, the ceiling transport vehicle releases the support of the container by the support portion after the container is connected to the eject portion, and the inactive gas supplying device causes the eject portion to be retracted horizontally by the horizontal movement actuator to cause the nitrogen gas supply passage to be re-connected at the intermediate location. In the conventional article transport facility, the inactive gas supplying device is configured to eject inactive gas from the eject portion to supply inactive gas to the container after the eject portion is retracted as described above.